{"title":"Retranslating Ambiguity: On the New Translations of Two Tales by E.A. Poe","authors":"Irina V. Golovacheva, S. Udalova","doi":"10.22455/2541-7894-2020-8-435-462","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2020-8-435-462","url":null,"abstract":"The paper comments on our new translations of E.A. Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) and “The Black Cat” (1843). The introductory section reviews retranslation theories since the birth of the so-called Retranslation Hypothesis. We consider Lawrence Venuti’s idea of retranslation as best fitting our strategy. According to his point of view, each retranslation is, in fact, a reinterpretation. Besides correcting or debating other translations of Poe, we preserved what we thought to be insightful and eloquent in them. Our major objective was to retain the cognitive obstacles, the contradictory meaning of Poe’s prose, rather than to avoid its ambiguity, discrepancies, and repetitiveness. The non-native reader’s verdict, his or her assessment of the narrators’ sanity at the moment of crime and the validity of their post-crime narratives, would largely depend on the translator’s effort to savor both gothic undertones and numerous indications of mental instability in Poe’s tales. Such indications allowed numerous critics to diagnose the narrators with a variety of mental disorders. Another goal of our translations was to savor a distinctiveness of Poe’s prose, its affectiveness – the diction and phrasing of the oral spontaneous speech of “The Tell-Tale Heart” narrator and the penned account given in “The Black Cat”. We made it a point to preserve where possible the authorial syntax and punctuation i.e. the numerous dashes, as well as italicized words and phrases, in order to project a tone of voice and sketch the psychological contours of the characters, especially that of the first narrator, whose pathological reactions could be caused by external or delusory sensory overload.","PeriodicalId":34458,"journal":{"name":"Literatura dvukh Amerik","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46238042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In Search of “Our America”: Two Trips of Waldo Frank to Argentina (1929, 1942)","authors":"V. Popova","doi":"10.22455/2541-7894-2020-8-265-308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2020-8-265-308","url":null,"abstract":"The paper dwells on the Argentine contacts of the American writer Waldo Frank (1889–1967): two lecture tours to Argentina in 1929 and 1942 and subsequent literary projects. The author discusses the peculiarities of Waldo Frank’s literary image formation in Argentina before his visit: since 1925, Samuel Glusberg, one of the trip organizers, introduced Frank's works to Argentinean readers on the pages of his magazines Babel and La vida literaria. Together with J.C. Mariátegui, Glusberg made arrangements for publishing Frank's books in Latin America. After his first trip in 1929, Frank gained a great popularity in Argentina, became the ideological inspirer of the large-scale journal Sur edited by Victoria Ocampo, was published in the Latin American press and issued the travelogue America Hispana: a Portrait and a Prospect (1931). The second trip of 1942 was significantly different from the first one: Frank led anti-war propaganda and was declared persona non grata for criticizing Argentina policy. After leaving Argentina, Frank did not lose faith in the New World utopia and continued the Latin American theme in his work. The paper compares the writer’s two visits to Argentina, reconstructs the content of his speeches according to his two lecture collections Primer mensaje a América Hispana (1930) and Ustedes y nosotros: nuevo mensaje para Iberoamérica (1942), as well as travelogues America Hispana and South American Journey (1943) and Memoirs of Waldo Frank (1973); traces the evolution of his utopian ideas about the unity of the Americas. The correspondence between Frank and Glusberg sheds light on many joint projects of the writers. The paper uses materials from the Latin American press of the 1920–1940s, for the first time systematizes publications on W. Frank’s work in Babel and La vida literaria. The study is complemented by a brief analisis of North American book reviews of Frank’s books on Latin America and the Argentinean chronicles of August 1942 from The New York Times. A list of the Argentine editions of Frank’s books is published in the addendum.","PeriodicalId":34458,"journal":{"name":"Literatura dvukh Amerik","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49361321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making the Epic New: Notes on the Russian Translation of \"The Cantos\"","authors":"A. Bronnikov","doi":"10.22455/2541-7894-2019-7-452-465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2019-7-452-465","url":null,"abstract":"A brief account of the first Russian translation of The Cantos of Ezra Pound is presented. The problems encountered during translation are considered, and the translator’s and editorial decisions are discussed. An overview of the references used during the work on the translation and commentaries is presented. The central problem of translating The Cantos is identified as a lack of poetic language and techniques in Russian literature that are comparable with those of Anglo-American modernism. The methods of creating the modernist epic in Russian poetry are discussed and examples of similar attempts made by predecessors are mentioned. In particular, the translations made by N.I. Gnedich, M.L. Lozinsky, A.Ya. Sergeev, S.S. Khoruzhi and V.A. Hinkis, as well as translations of ancient Greek and Chinese literature are mentioned. Among all the various factors influencing the transition of the text from one literature to the other, authenticity, persuasiveness and laconism are stressed as the major reference points not only for translating the text, but also for commenting on the translation and writing the biographical notes. Every effort was made to ensure that the book would look and feel like an artifact of Pound’s lifetime. This is perfectly in line with the concept of Fortleben of the original text, as was suggested by Walter Benjamin. In this way, the translation is seen not only as an interpretation of the text, but as the renewal, survival and prolongation of the text’s life.","PeriodicalId":34458,"journal":{"name":"Literatura dvukh Amerik","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42963727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“A Vague, Invarious Delight”: Ezra Pound’s “Middle-Aging Care” and Bernard Hart’s Psychology of the Complex","authors":"Rhett Forman","doi":"10.22455/2541-7894-2019-7-394-413","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2019-7-394-413","url":null,"abstract":"This article compares Ezra Pound’s use of the word “complex,” a term he employs to define imagism, with British integral psychologist Bernard Hart’s use of the term. Pound cites Hart in “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” as the source of the term. This study first surveys the prominent role of emotion in Pound’s literary theory before it investigates how George Mead’s Quest Society introduced Pound to British integral psychologists like Hart. Finally, it considers the influence of British integral psychology on two of Pound’s poems. While living in London among the burgeoning school of what Arthur McDougall calls British “integral psychology,” Pound borrowed terms from this school to compose two poems that express contrasting understandings of the term “complex,” namely, “Middle-Aged: A Study in an Emotion” (1912) and “Villanelle: The Psychological Hour” (1915). As this study demonstrates, in “Middle-Aged” the emotional content of the imagist complex revitalizes the speaker’s creativity, whereas in “Villanelle” the speaker deteriorates into hysteria via the Hartian complex. A careful analysis reveals that, while “Villanelle” adheres more closely to Hart’s sense of the term “complex” as a pathogenic, destructive concept, “Middle-Aged” expresses a different, more constructive understanding of the term in accord with Pound’s usage in “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste.”","PeriodicalId":34458,"journal":{"name":"Literatura dvukh Amerik","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48038821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Make It New\" – the Digital Magazine of the Ezra Pound Society","authors":"R. Preda","doi":"10.22455/2541-7894-2019-7-466-473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2019-7-466-473","url":null,"abstract":"The article outlines the history and profile of the latest periodical dedicated to the work of Ezra Pound, the digital quarterly Make It New. It was created by Roxana Preda in 2014 as an organ of the Ezra Pound Society, and is still running today. Make It New was launched simultaneously with the Pound Society website at a time when the digital medium was ripe enough to include and present the global work done in Pound studies. The aim of the new serial was to inform members of Society events (conferences and awards) as well as announce and review new publications on or related to Pound. The structure of the magazine was inspired by Carroll F. Terrell’s Paideuma to which the editor added the advantages of the electronic medium: speedy publication, multimedia, global sourcing of information. Make It New has a focus on reviews of new work in Pound studies and is a meeting ground of old and young scholars from all over the world.","PeriodicalId":34458,"journal":{"name":"Literatura dvukh Amerik","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47058469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modernism’s “Doors of Perception”: From Ezra Pound’s Ideogrammic Method to Marshall Mcluhan’s “Mosaic”","authors":"Panayiotes T. Tryphonopoulos, D. Tryphonopoulos","doi":"10.22455/2541-7894-2019-7-377-393","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2019-7-377-393","url":null,"abstract":"Writing to Ezra Pound in May 1948, Marshall McLuhan told the poet that, “we [that is, Hugh Kenner and I] have long taken a serious interest [in] your work.” And so, McLuhan along with Kenner visited Pound at St Elizabeths in June 1948. The rest makes for interesting modernist literary and cultural studies history. This paper argues that McLuhan’s method of composition, which he called a “mosaic,” derives from his understanding of Pound’s poetics of the ideogrammic method. In The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962), McLuhan explains that the book “develops a mosaic or field approach to its problems. Such a mosaic image of numerous data and quotations in evidence offers the only practical means of revealing the causal operations in history.” McLuhan learned much from the American poet, including to view literature/pedagogy as “training of perception”; and both developed texts that placed readers in media res, encouraging an heuristic approach to “reading” whereby readers are empowered to arrive at their own meaning or interpretation irrespective of the writers’ ideology and/or agenda. Using examples from The Cantos and The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967), this essay also probes the relationships between modernist aesthetics, technological prophesy and sociopolitical praxis.","PeriodicalId":34458,"journal":{"name":"Literatura dvukh Amerik","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43147151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}